


Don't Need A Weather Man

by Unsentimentalf



Series: Black Hole [6]
Category: Sherlock BBC
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-26
Updated: 2010-10-26
Packaged: 2017-10-12 21:48:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/129423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unsentimentalf/pseuds/Unsentimentalf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A kidnapping has far reaching consequences for Greg, Sherlock, Sally and John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Need A Weather Man

**Author's Note:**

> Last part of the fairly loose Black Hole series, but stands on its own (or as sequel to Manhunt/Morning After).

John was finishing a plate of toast and his first coffee of the day when Sherlock's phone shrilled warning of a text from the edge of the sofa.

Sherlock was nowhere to be seen. Asleep, John presumed, in his bed for once, almost certainly alone, the door shut. It was barely half eight.

John waited for a moment. No Sherlock. The message would probably wait, but as he took his plate through to the kitchen he picked up the phone anyway. Apparently- he thought of yesterday's one-sided quarrel- phone messages weren't private, even when they definitely were. If Sherlock insisted on reading every word he got from Sarah, then maybe he should start taking a look at Sherlock's mail. From Lestrade, for instance.

John was fairly sure that Lestrade wouldn't be incautious enough to send Sherlock anything that couldn't safely be read out loud to both Sally Donovan and his mother. Moreover if Lestrade did send something indiscreet then John would certainly rather not know. Still, it was the principle of the thing.

Number withheld. He read the short text with some bemusement. Not, he imagined, from Lestrade, unless the two of them had taken to swapping football cards along with bodily fluids.

 _Kevin Davenport. Want to trade?_

With anyone else he'd thought it was spam, but he'd endured a long lecture from Sherlock a couple of weeks previously when he'd complained about an unwanted offer relating to the purported size of part of his anatomy. Sherlock, he was given to understand, didn't get spam. Sherlock got very few calls at all. Despite the man's apparently promiscuous use of technology, his number was known only to those he wanted it to be.

John sat down again and opened his laptop. "Kevin Davenport". There were any number of them online, none seeming particularly significant- a minor actor, the chairman of an even more minor football club, a few businessmen, a couple of teenagers who didn't know or care about social networks' security settings. Nothing recent, nothing important. Certainly nothing in the news.

John sighed miserably. He was going to have to wake Sherlock, just in case. Might as well put on the kettle again first.

Knocking, as he'd feared, got no response. For an insomniac, Sherlock slept extremely soundly between 6am and noon. John hated going into his bedroom to wake him. He liked Sherlock conscious, in control of the situation. Sherlock asleep and vulnerable disturbed him. Sherlock naked, as he usually slept, was something that he really didn't want to have to confront. Their partnership- their friendship- operated strictly outside bedrooms and whatever Sherlock might claim to want, John wasn't going to let that change.

He was tempted to just leave it. After all, if he hadn't looked at the text it would have had to wait until Sherlock woke. But there was something sufficiently disturbing about the few words to made him turn the door handle.

"Sherlock!" A shout through the crack in the door.

"What?" Half asleep and irritated.

"Text for you."

"Read it."

John read it out loud.

"Here."

"No. Put some clothes on and come out here, Sherlock." He closed the door firmly, went to finish making the coffee.

Dressing gown was clothes of a sort, even if it didn't seem to fasten very well and had nothing underneath. Sherlock grinned at him, knowing exactly what his objection was, not caring, before he picked up the phone. His attention was instantly away from John onto the message.

"Kevin Davenport?"

"I've done some searches, found nothing obvious."

"Hmm. Trade? Why would we want this Davenport? And what would the sender want in trade?" His eyes flickered back to John. "Real clothes, unfortunately. Let's go and see if Scotland Yard are interested in swapping people."

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All Lestrade could think about was that bloody joke of a seminar. 3pm graveyard slot of a otherwise pretty interesting training course on handling hostage situations; a DI couldn't always just wait for the specialists to arrive. Forty minutes on staying alive. No-one had been paying much attention; lunch had been pretty heavy and detective inspectors didn't get themselves kidnapped. Not until today.

So here he was, somewhere in an office block somewhere in London. They'd untied his hands, removed the blanket from over a head still aching horribly from the blow that had knocked him unconscious. The man across the empty desk from him was looking extremely pleased with himself and somehow familiar, though Lestrade was sure they'd never met. There were two men either side of him and, he thought, another two behind; he'd heard them talk briefly in some eastern European language.

Co-operate, the expert had insisted. Violence was cumulative. Don't give them a reason to hit you because they might not stop. Persuade them to deal with you as an individual. Be polite.

Lestrade wasn't feeling inclined to politeness. He was pretty sure that he was more furious with them than he was with himself but it was a near thing. Because if he hadn't been so bloody careless he wouldn't have been here at all.

There had been a minor shunt between a car and a van in front of his flat this morning. As he'd walked past a burly man had been shouting at a flustered woman, who seemed close to tears. Joys of being a policeman, he'd thought, stopping. "What's the problem?"

The van driver had turned eagerly towards him, glad to have someone to complain to. "I've got computer equipment in there. Last time the insurance wouldn't pay because they said I didn't have evidence that it was in the van at the time. I just need her to take a look for the statement."

Lestrade sighed. "You need the police out, mate."

"Like they're any help." The man sounded disgusted. The woman was plaintive, now appealing to Lestrade as well. "I just need his insurance details. I'm late for work. I'm not crawling around in the back of a van!"

She wasn't dressed for it; cream suit and heels so high that Lestrade suspected that they'd caused the crash on their own.

Lestrade was going to be late too. He didn't have time to wait for the beat officers, didn't feel that he could just walk away now he'd got involved.

"Show me, then. I'll give your insurance company a statement if they need one." He had peered unenthusiastically at the anonymous pile of boxes at the far end of the van and then he'd climbed straight in, thinking about nothing but trying to keep his suit trousers clean.

Bastards. Which of his various current sticky operations had earned him this, he wondered. He might as well try to put the seminar into practice, at least. Too many men in the room to fight his way out, and he was pretty sure that the one on the left of him had a holstered pistol.

So he nodded at the self satisfied young man that he'd taken an instant and unsurprising dislike to.

"Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade. I'm sure you knew that. What's this about?"

That was as civil as he could manage.

A wide smile, with nothing pleasant about it at all. "Take your shirt off."

Lestrade blinked. Still, five to one in here. He guessed that he was still co-operating then. Why they might think he was wired, he didn't know- he'd been going to a management meeting when they'd grabbed him, but he'd do what he was told.

He slid his jacket off slowly, no sudden movements, dropped it on the desk and undid his shirt buttons. As he pulled the shirt off the man in front of him leaned forward, intent.

There wasn't much left to see. Lestrade had dressed in front of the mirror this morning, noting that the bruises were no more than the faintest of yellow marks, the bites on his neck gone.

"Turn round."

The scratches had taken longer to heal than he'd thought, but even these were only silver marks. But as he turned back he tracked the watching eyes, were sure that those marks were what the man had been looking for, and seen.

That shouldn't have been possible. Only two people knew what he'd allowed Sherlock to do, and he hadn't thought that either of them would pass on the information.

Unless- a thought that came as no relief at all- the marks had not been known but had been predicted, which displayed a worrying level of knowledge about the habits of a certain detective.

Letting himself be kidnapped to put pressure on the Met; that was bad enough. If he survived this his career might not. Letting himself to get kidnapped to put pressure on Sherlock; that was far worse. The Met's reactions to a senior policeman being held hostage were reasonably predictable. He didn't even know if Sherlock would particularly care about his welfare; he certainly couldn't guess what form any reaction would take.

If this was about Sherlock- he knew the man behind the desk. He'd been there for John's careful witness statements, he'd seen the photofit, and the file stamped Deceased. There had been a body, and DNA confirmation; it appeared that they had all been wrong.

"Jim Moriarty," he said aloud. No point pretending that he didn't know; this man wouldn't be fooled. Moriarty was a frighteningly efficient murdering psychopath. Wonderful. This day was getting worse by the second.

"What do you want from him?"

"Not your concern, Inspector. You're not part of the negotiations. You're leverage."

"You've got this wrong." He was desperate for the man to understand that he was entirely sincere. "I don't matter a damn to Sherlock. You can't use me to get to him. He's not sentimental about people he sleeps with and he really doesn't have any second thoughts about me."

His phone rang over the last couple of words. One of the men pulled it out of the jacket pocket, pushed it across to Moriarty, who glanced at the screen, held it up, still ringing, for him to read the caller ID.

Sherlock. Calling for God knows what reason, and neatly undermining him in the process. As usual. There really seemed no end to the ways in which Holmes could mess up his life. Getting him kidnapped seemed almost in retrospect predictable.

The phone was dropped on the desk, where it rang a couple more times, then went silent. Moriarty was laughing.

"No doubt you think I should have picked John Watson. Dear, dear John, who Sherlock loves oooh, so much. You wouldn't have cried many tears over that, now, would you?"

His voice was sharper. "I always know what I'm doing. Sherlock would tear London apart looking for his darling. He wouldn't even stop to think about giving me what I'm asking very nicely for, which is such a small thing, completely unimportant to him.

"So instead of threatening his entire universe," he smiled at Lestrade, sickly sweet. "I've just borrowed his latest toy without asking. The aim is to irritate, not enrage. I'm not unobservant, Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade. I know just how little Sherlock Holmes thinks of you. But Sherlock likes hurting men while he fucks them and he's not got anyone else who will let him play that game without paying for it. That and his pass into Scotland Yard's files- he'll want you back."

Lestrade stood silent, chilled, trying not to show it. He wasn't going to tell himself that that wasn't how it was. He'd let Sherlock drag him into bed, knowing the man was only after sex. He'd let Sherlock get off on hurting him. He'd let himself be used, and now he was being used again and it was his own damn fault for letting wishful thinking get the better of him. For wanting to make a connection with a man who didn't connect with anyone, except possibly in some warped way John Watson. Sherlock and this Moriarty- they were a pair, and everyone else were just toys to them.

He wondered what the small thing was. If Sherlock would think it worth his life.

"He'll be at the Yard by now, talking to your delightfully stubborn Sergeant. I think we'll send them a video, just to let them know you're in the game."

Video footage of a hostage was standard procedure, but Lestrade didn't at all like the gleam in the man's eye. He didn't think that he'd managed to get Moriarty to see him as an individual at all, or at least not in any good way. He was considering his very limited next options when Moriarty pulled open a desk drawer, sent a bundle of heavy duty cable ties skittering towards him.

Fuck co-operation. Lestrade went for the gun holster, was hit by three bodies and a great deal of pain. After that things went downhill fast.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"No."

Sally Donovan stood up. She'd wasted enough time on this already. Holmes worked, despite her frequent advice against it, for Lestrade, not the other way around. He did not get access to police files any time he wanted it. She was not going to let a civilian poke around in records on the basis of a name. She wouldn't give this particular civilian the time of day.

"You know the name. You reacted." Sherlock was trying overbearing. It wasn't going to work. "Clearly this is already a police matter. Let me see the file and I'll solve it for you."

Nothing to be solved. The police had this one well in hand. Sherlock couldn't, or wouldn't, even say who had texted him about it or what they had wanted.

"No."

He glared at her, pulled out his phone. She listened with some satisfaction to the ringtone going through to a familiar voicemail.

"You won't get the DI this morning. He's at a planning meeting. You've made your request and I've refused it. Go away. Some of us have work to do."

She thought for a moment that he might actually do it. Then the phone in his hand beeped. He glanced down, then focussed, intent, for a few seconds.

"Computer." He put the phone down, reached across her desk to pull the keyboard and mouse across to his side, then swung the monitor around.

"What are you doing?" She tried to pull them back, got the keyboard tugged hard out of her hand. God, she disliked this man.

"I need to see this on a larger screen." Sherlock was tapping rapidly at the keyboard, then at his phone. Donovan decided that she wasn't prepared to tussle awkwardly over the desk; she came around to his side to reclaim her computer equipment and throw him out.

He was in her email program, clicking on a new item, opening the attachment. A video clip on the monitor now facing towards all three of them. She snorted in derision.

"For Christ's sake, Sherlock! That's just childish! You want to watch porn, go do it at home."

"Be quiet."

There was no need- the clip had no sound. "Turn it off."

It lasted barely fifteen seconds; he'd set it to loop. Sherlock didn't reply; he was concentrating on the screen. She found herself watching it too.

"It's faked." she announced flatly.

"Oh?" Sherlock looked across at her, frowning. "Why do you think that?"

"It's the angle. No-one shoots over-the-desk porn from directly behind like that, unless they are trying to hide the fact that nothing's actually going on in front. You can barely see the woman; just bits of her legs, and only the man from the waist down. It's seriously crap, so probably faked."

"Mmm." Sherlock looked back at the screen.

"I'm right, aren't I?" He was clearly trying not to admit it.

"Wrong entirely."

"Sure." He just didn't like admitting that other people sometimes saw things first.

"Try looking properly," he said, without looking back up at her, "instead of jumping to conclusions. It's not a woman, it's not faked and it's not porn."

She frowned, watched a couple more runs of the clip, paused it. "Oh God, he's tied up."

Difficult to see at first in the poor light, but the man obscured was facing away, dark streaks from his ankles. Sherlock zoomed in on blurred photo; definitely something tying the man to the desk legs.

"Shit. Who sent you this?"

"I imagine the same person who's offering to trade. Could this be Davenport?"

Sally shook her head. "It damn well oughtn't to be. He's in the witness protection programme."

She went out into the main office for a word with one of her officers. Came back. "They're trying to contact him now."

Sherlock was now watching the clip frame by frame, apparently unmoved by the content. John was standing back, looking as unhappy as she felt. The PA brought in Davenport's file and she leafed through it, familiar with the case in outline. He was a minor crook turned Crown evidence in relation to a very significant money laundering and weapons smuggling set up; the case was due to be heard in the next month or so, after which they were relocating Davenport with a new identity. Unless the bad guys got to him first.

But Gerald, the case handler, was at the door now. "I've just spoken to him myself. There's nothing wrong there. I'm sending someone round to pick him up, bring him in."

"Good." She hadn't ordered that but it was a good idea.

Sherlock was staring at her, eyes widening. "They don't have Davenport for trade. They want him. Get Lestrade on the phone."

It was nearly eleven already. "He'll be out of his meeting in an hour or so." She could handle this.

"Get him on the phone now." Sherlock looked disturbed; more so than usual. "Do it,   
Sergeant."

Sally sighed. She was going to get bolloxed by the DI for dragging him out of a meeting with the Commissioner, but it was his pet consulting detective who was insisting. She'd remind Greg of this next time he insisted the place was turned upside down for one of Holmes' whims.

She found the number for the Commissioner's secretary. Encountered, to her surprise, polite bemusement. Yes, the DI had been due to attend the meeting, but he hadn't arrived. The secretary left a message on his answerphone but he hadn't come back to him yet. If DI Lestrade arrived then he would pass on the message that she wanted to get in touch.

Sherlock had gone back to his careful scrutiny without comment. He'd known that Lestrade wouldn't be there.

"Where is he?" She didn't like this at all.

"Hush. I'm trying to work that out." He didn't look up.

Greg was there? Realisation and nausea almost overwhelmed her.

Someone was next to her, pushing Sherlock aside, an arm around her elbow, steering her away from the screen. "Come and sit down, Sally. It's going to be all right. Sherlock will find him." She found herself sitting on the chair in the edge of the room, John Watson at her side. "He will find him. I promise."

"Shut up, John! I'm trying to work." Sherlock sounded entirely unsympathetic. The man's callousness drove her out of her seat. She was a police officer. She didn't need a doctor. Greg needed her to do her job.

"You've got two minutes to look at those pictures, Holmes. After that I need everything you've got."

She wished there was something else that she could think of to do, to help, but she had to understand the situation first, and that meant Sherlock. So she stood and waited, watching the second hand of the clock on the desk move agonisingly slowly, refusing John's arm.

Five seconds before the time was up, Sherlock turned away from the screen, towards her.

"Not enough!" He seemed frustrated. "Early Victorian conversion to office block, north west corner. Above the third floor. It was refurbished one to two years ago but has been barely used since- it's been hard to rent office space out recently. I imagine the agents would have asked around £110 a square foot, give or take £20 each way. Look for new rentals in the last month as somewhere to start."

Sally had to know how much of that was guesswork. "You could tell that much from a patch of carpet?"

"And the desk legs. The man's 6 foot 2, 185 pounds, black haired, under 35, Russian or Balkan origin, not been here longer than 2 weeks, possibly days. He was carrying a gun- something small, probably a Derringer, before he undressed. He's been somewhere unusually dusty this morning, but was wearing smart casual at the time. Heterosexual, obviously violent; probably a history against women."

He was on his toes, restless. "Find out how Lestrade was taken. Get a trace on this phone for the next call. See if your technicians can trace the texts. I want all the files relating to Kevin Davenport now."

She swallowed. "I can't." Held a hand up to stave off his annoyance. "Five minutes after I call this one in this place is going to be swarming with Special Branch and the Commissioner's office and you're going to be answering questions for the rest of the day. They find that I've given you access to confidential files, they'll take them straight back and probably arrest both of us. "

"Don't call it in." Sherlock was matter of fact.

"The DI's been kidnapped, Sherlock. I can't keep that quiet, even if I wanted to."

"What makes you think that he's been kidnapped?"

A moment of hope. "Isn't it him?"

"You didn't recognise him. You've got no link to this video. All you know for certain is that he isn't answering his phone. " He smiled at her, humourless. "Think about it, Sergeant. I could spend the rest of the day answering idiotic questions or I could spend it finding Lestrade. Your choice."

Greg could have all the resources that the Metropolitan Police could provide searching for him. Or he could have Sherlock Holmes. Sally knew perfectly well which he'd choose. She tossed the file down onto the table. "I'll get the rest. One hour. Then I get the files back and Special Branch in. But I need the answer to one question first."

He was still, waiting.

"Someone's kidnapped a police officer to try to get access to a police witness. What do they gain by getting you involved?"

She caught John's wary look. He knew something. But it was Sherlock who answered.

"No senior police officer is going to authorise the hand over of Davenport to his murderers. They're going to run around in circles for a few days until they think they've found out where Lestrade is being kept, then they'll launch a badly planned raid, get him killed and award him a posthumous medal. Whoever set this up doesn't want that result."

Sally knew all too well that might happen. "But they think you'll give them Davenport?"

He looked down at the papers, away from her. "Don't worry, Sergeant. I'll get Lestrade back."

"Even if it means getting an innocent man hurt?" How amoral was this man? Should she be letting him anywhere near Davenport's papers?

"Let's see how innocent, shall we?" He opened the file.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The sight of the plastic-wrapped sandwich brought nausea again. Lestrade pulled the bottle of water out of the brown paper bag instead, struggled to open it with shaking hands.

It didn't matter if they noticed. He'd realised that earlier, when they'd finished tying him to the desk and Jim Moriarty was walking around him, giving instructions for camera angles. This was being choreographed. Nothing he said or did; no pleas or promises or curses or reason, no heroism or cowardice could prevent this. It was Sherlock's reactions that Moriarty wanted. His were irrelevant.

He didn't want Sherlock to watch him struggling helplessly, pointlessly, ripping more skin off his raw wrists and ankles; Sherlock wouldn't sympathise with a reaction so illogical. He quite desperately didn't want Sherlock to see this at all, but that wasn't his choice. The only choice he had was not to play victim in Moriarty's charade. So he'd put his head down and refused to let himself react to the anger and the disgust and the helplessness, concentrating on the physical challenge of not getting too badly damaged. Sherlock, he had thought with twisted humour, would approve. After all he'd done something not too dissimilar and a million miles away with Sherlock himself. He was going to kill the man with his bare hands when he got out of this.

Afterwards they'd cut him loose, pushed his clothes into his arms, taken him next door to the men's toilets. He'd sat in the closed cubicle for a while, thinking about DNA evidence, thinking about HIV infection, thinking about scrubbing every trace of what had just happened off his skin. Then he'd washed as well as he could, knowing it would make no difference to any of the those things, and dressed. He'd stood on the toilet seat and managed to force the tiny high window open enough to see what he needed. Finally he'd tried to settle his breathing and heart rate before he opened the door to his alert, unemotional guards.

He didn't know which of them it had been; that bothered him. Not Moriarty at least; he'd sat on the other side of the desk, close enough that Lestrade could have reached out and strangled that fucking smile off his mouth if his hands hadn't been bound behind him.

So now, he guessed, he was co-operating again, even though that had done him sod-all good earlier. At least he was sitting where he was told to, not quite managing to bring himself to eat the sandwich. Some of the men had hot drinks; he'd not been given one. They probably knew that he'd throw it in someone's face.

For a long time he sat sipping the water, watching Moriarty intent at his laptop, the men behind him talking intermittently in whatever language they used. He knew roughly where they were, now, thanks to that small window. The unmistakeable curve of the Serpentine, barely quarter of a mile away; he was south of Kensington Gardens, about five floors up. Lestrade didn't kid himself that he was ready for whatever happened next, but if there was any chance to let Sherlock know, he'd be ready for that at least.

The wait was a nightmare. The scrapes on his wrists and ankles were a constant sickening pain. His head still throbbed; he was pretty sure he had minor concussion from this morning. And over all of this was the thudding knowledge that Moriarty only had to lift his head and speak and it would happen again. When Jim did finally look up and smile at him, he thought that he was going to throw up again.

"It's been an hour and Sherlock hasn't given me what I want yet. Naughty boy. Voicemail this time, I think."

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sherlock could think of nothing to do.

All around him the police station was full of people doing what he told them. Checking recent office lets. Collecting statements from witnesses to the staged traffic accident outside Lestrade's flat. Cross referencing everything mentioned in Davenport's file against everything he could think of. They'd got people in who could do things with his phone that he couldn't; that was interesting. He'd picked up a couple of new tricks so the morning hadn't been entirely wasted.

Donovan had backed up everything he'd ordered without any argument. The hour was up but she hadn't said anything. She was in shock, but it gave him the free hand he needed.

But now he'd run out of ideas. He'd gone back to watching the video footage, over and over, until somehow the monitor had crashed onto the carpet and John had sat him down and made him hot, sweet coffee and gently told him to find something else.

He had to do something. "Put Davenport out on the street. See who comes to get him."

"No." The first dissension from Donovan for over an hour. "I'm not going to be party to his murder."

"We can get him back."

"Not from a sniper's bullet. That's all they'd need."

"He's nothing." Sherlock hissed in frustration. Couldn't they see? "He'll probably drink himself to death anyway. Statistically witness relocations have very poor outcomes."

John was staring at him. Damn. "He won't get shot anyway," he added helpfully. "The bad guys will want to use him to set an example. He'll be perfectly safe."

"No!" From Donovan, who had some say in the matter, and John, who didn't.

He turned away from them, paced up and down a few times. Trying to think.

"They'll send another video, when they don't get what they want. There'll be something more from there. It might have sound; that would be useful."

He glanced at his watch. "Might take them a while to set it up again. But hopefully in the next half hour."

Donovan made a choked noise.

"Sherlock." John's voice was distressed. Sherlock frowned at them. "What?"

"Greg's getting hurt to make those videos. We really don't want another one."

"Lestrade's tougher than he looks. It makes no difference anyway; we will get one whether we want it or not. I'm just explaining that it is likely to be useful."

"That's it." Donovan stood up, voice barely shaking. "You've seen the files. You've got nothing. We've evidence now that Greg was abducted this morning. I'm going to the Commissioner."

And Sherlock's phone rang.

Clever. The trace on the phone had been neatly avoided by a hack straight into his voicemail account. This whole operation was too neat, too organised, too aimed directly at him. He'd been sure that Moriarty was dead; now he was equally certain that the man was not. But he intended that Jim Moriarty would be, very soon. Today's events were intolerable.

He put the voicemail on speaker, listened to it through, timing it automatically. Two minutes exactly. As it ran through a second time he could hear information, background noises, but he found it surprisingly difficult to concentrate on them. All he was hearing was Lestrade's voice, then the noises of fists and feet and the muffled cries.

When he started to play it through the third time John put up a hand. "Pause it." he said. "I know you have to listen to it over, Sherlock, but Sally doesn't and I'd rather not. I'll go with her to the Commissioner, help explain."

"Can't you stay here?" What did John know about police procedures? Sherlock wanted him to talk to.

"I'm a doctor, Sherlock. You're the detective. All I'm going to hear from that recording is how badly he's hurt. Let me do something useful, please."

John didn't like Lestrade, for reasons that had entirely to do with John and Sherlock and nothing as far as Sherlock could see to do with Lestrade himself. But John had a high capacity for the empathy that Sherlock lacked. Hearing Lestrade being hurt would hurt John. Sherlock was annoyed and frustrated enough about Lestrade; there was no need to have John in pain as well,

"Go on, then." He turned back to the phone, restarted it. Became aware that Donovan wasn't leaving.

"Play the voice again." She sounded as if something had just occurred to her. Sherlock wondered which of the eight things that had occurred to him it was, or whether she was just wrong again.

Lestrade's voice, stressed heavily, bitter and furious.

 _Compared to what my fucking boyfriend is going to do when he gets here, this is a bloody walk in the fucking gardens!_

"Did you know he had a boyfriend?" She was frowning at him. "I though he was single. And straight."

"It's a poor choice of term." Surprising; the man always seemed acutely and excessively conscious of what the relationship between them was, or wasn't.

"Poor or not, he needs to know what's happened. What's his name?"

Trust Donovan to run off after inconsequentials. Sherlock restarted the sound clip. Over the noise he heard John being awkward.

"He knows, Sally." The pause was probably a nod in his direction. Not helpful, John.

Sherlock turned just in time to read the punch coming his way, not enough time to dodge it. Donovan's fist connected squarely with his cheek.

"You bastard!" She was furious. "That's why those messages came to you. That's why you haven't wanted anyone else involved. He got taken because of you and you haven't even the decency to admit it. You'd rather keep your little secret than have him found.

"How could Greg possibly be stupid enough to get involved with a crazy heartless freak like you? Now it's going to get him killed, and you're not even breaking a sweat, are you? Just another puzzle to show off about. I hope Special Branch throw away the fucking key!"

Sherlock rubbed his cheek, watching her storm out. John shot him a helpless glance then followed.

Boyfriend. Lestrade hadn't even told his colleagues that he was gay. Now he outs himself on a tape he must know would be heard widely. And uses that term, boyfriend. What if Lestrade was being deliberately incongruous? Sherlock would be the only one who could be expected to notice. Was there a message in there for him? When Sherlock gets where?

He restarted it.

"This is a walk in the gardens." That was wrong. You walk in the park. You stroll in the garden. Gardens, plural, not singular. Substitute gardens for park? In central London that could only mean Kensington Gardens, a park in all but name.

Lestrade knew he was near Kensington Gardens. He was in a north west facing office; assuming he'd seen out of a window, that put him in Kensington itself. Yes!

The rental information was on a spreadsheet- he pulled it up, searched by postcode. Down to a dozen entries. One stood out; a rental of the top two floors of a five story building last week. The company was called Limequest Ltd; newly set up, very little at Companies House, claimed to be a property development company but nothing on Land Registry. No website. What would a nonentity like that need with two floors of prime London estate? Some of the stuff on the voicemail had been pretty loud; they might want an empty floor below them.

Sherlock checked his first instinct to go and find John. The whole investigation was about to get taken out of his hands by the clods at Special Branch. He had only a brief window in which he could act.

He walked out into the main office, looked around for Gerald.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

They'd left Lestrade, this time, where he lay curled on the carpet, arms wrapped over his head. After a while he'd uncurled a little, looked around. Everyone was back to where they had been before; Moriarty at his laptop, the other men drinking coffee and watching their boss and their prisoner incuriously.

Breathing hurt; he thought a rib or two was cracked. One wrist hurt like hell from where a kick had landed; fractured, probably. A punch to his right eye had left it closed and swollen. Everything else was just cuts and bruises, he hoped. Oh, and he'd thrown up on the floor. He pulled himself painfully away from the mess. They could, he thought to himself tiredly, have given him a hand with clearing up again.

It appeared that whatever the small thing that Moriarty wanted was, Sherlock wasn't playing ball. Lestrade knew that there was a pretty good chance that Jim had no intention of letting him go; that this was only going to end with his death, unless Sherlock could come up with something clever. He wished the bastard would hurry up and do it.

Moriarty had said that Sherlock would be at the Yard. Lestrade thought of his message. If it had got through at all. it would probably have been heard by everyone from the Commissioner down. Sorry, Sally. He hoped that Sherlock would have managed to disabuse her of the boyfriend idea without revealing quite how pathetically desperate her DI was.

That was enough thinking. He closed his eyes, let his cheek fall forward against the carpet. What was the point of watching out for the next assault when he couldn't do anything about it? He might as well just lie here and wait.

A buzzer sounded and he jerked awake. One of the men had a walkie-talkie. There was a quick three way conversation between guard, Moriarty and whoever was at the other end, then the man left. Moriarty was on his feet, but he gave Lestrade no more than a quick glance.

When the guard returned a few minutes later, Moriarty snatched the piece of paper from him, read it, looked down at Lestrade, grinning.

"Guess who's come out to play?" And to the guard. "Give me your phone."

Lestrade pulled himself to his feet, swearing at the pain. Moriarty had dropped the paper to the desk; he reached out with his good hand to read it.

 _I have a photo for you. Phone no. SH_

Lestrade found himself fighting back tears. Something about that familiar handwriting, that arrogant 'SH'- Sherlock had found them. He knew things had objectively just got far more dangerous but he found it hard to care. Sherlock was out there. He wondered if there was already a police cordon around the building- he couldn't hear anything.

The guards seemed to be wondering the same thing. They checked the windows, talked on the walkie talkie, anxiety strong in their voices. Moriarty didn't so much as look round; he was texting on the guard's phone, then staring at it impatiently.

The noise of the return text made a couple of the guards jump. Moriarty snarled something at them and they steadied. He looked down at the phone and he was laughing, high pitched, hilarious.

"Look." He held the phone out for Lestrade to see. One of the maps at the entrance to Kensington Gardens, and a young man standing up next to it, looking straight at the camera and frankly terrified. And a single word underneath.  
 _Swap._ "

"I told you he'd give me what I wanted. Time to go play in the park."

There were more phone calls and a wait for a while first. Two of the men left the room; noises off including what Lestrade suspected was a single shot from a silenced pistol, then one came back pushing a lightweight wheelchair. The cable ties came out again, to Lestrade's badly repressed panic, but they just fastened his wrists and ankles before covering him with a rug and a wide hood. They were taking him out of here, out to meet Sherlock; he wasn't going to struggle against that. Though as they wheeled him down towards the park he did wonder where the hell everyone was.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

John had done his best to interpret Sherlock to the police commissioner, who was clearly only peripherally aware that one of her DIs had a consulting detective. Had _had_ a consulting detective, moreover. John was the last person to be able to sensibly explain Sherlock's personal and professional dealings with Lestrade, and he really didn't want to talk about the weird stuff. Sally's furious interjections really hadn't helped. He wasn't at all sure that the pleasantly spoken woman hadn't come away in the end with the impression that Sherlock was some sort of crazed stalker who was behind the the whole abduction.

Now he was sitting in her office, being watched rather unsubtly by her PA presumably in case he went sneaking a look at her papers, while she and Donovan and rather a lot of other serious looking people who had been summoned peremptorily met in the seminar room next door. John was not invited to what he suspected was effectively a council of war, but he had been told that he might need to answer further questions.

When Sherlock's text arrived he was genuinely torn. Sherlock had clearly found out something, and poor Sally deserved to know, at least. The high powered meeting next door might actually be able to do something useful with the information. Keeping it from them was almost certainly an indictable offence.

Still, Sherlock's instructions were clear.

 _Peter Pan, KG. Extreme caution required. Bring gun, not cavalry. SH_

John sighed. There was no real question but that he was going to do what he was told. He excused himself politely to the PA, headed out. A taxi to Baker Street, another to the Bayswater Road. Extreme caution; he avoided the main gates, cut through the bushes towards the statue. The place was bustling with office workers taking their breaks and young foreign nannies with pushchairs; it was still lunchtime and the sun was shining. He thought of gunfire here; it would be mayhem. For the the seventeenth or eighteenth time he hoped that Sherlock knew what he was doing.

The group was unmistakeable to anyone who knew what they were looking for. The men's poses, the angles they'd taken up with respect to each other were unnatural. There was someone bundled up in a wheelchair; could that be Lestrade? How badly had he been hurt? Could he run? The stance of the two men around him might have been protective, but John thought not. Sherlock's long frame was instantly recognisable. The man that he was talking to; John shivered. Moriarty; he was sure even from this distance. Not dead, after all, but deadly.

John's stomach turned over. He could lose him, here, gunned down in a London park. For a moment anger flared. Lestrade had no right to claim Sherlock's life like this. If it had been a stranger, John knew Sherlock wouldn't be out there unarmed, in front of five guns and a man who wanted him dead.

Moriarty would recognise him. John's initial plan of simply approaching as part of the crowd was discarded. Instead he wandered as close as he dared, started to cut across to another path but stopped behind the sparse bushes, dropped to one knee. He was conspicuous now; if there were outriders they'd be bound to spot him, but Sherlock had said bring a gun. He had to be in a position to use it. A thought, seeing others around him; he could lean back against the tree behind him, apparently basking in the sunshine with his eyes closed, actually watching the group of men through the bushes. His hand was tight around his pistol as he waited.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Sherlock was aware of everything.

Moriarty, coming forward to meet him, smiling as if Sherlock had brought him everything his heart could desire. Which, since he undoubtedly wanted Sherlock dead, meant that Sherlock was not intended to walk away from this one. As expected.

"Surprised to see me? Happy to see me?"

"Neither. "

"Come on, Sherlock. I know you are, really. You got bored without me."

He certainly didn't feel bored now. Angry, mainly, at the way Moriarty thought he could keep Sherlock running after him. At the way he chose to do it.

Lestrade, in the wheelchair. From the twist of his shoulders, his hands were tied; from the closeness of his knees under the rug, feet as well. He was in a lot of pain; Sherlock couldn't tell yet if his injuries would prevent him from independent movement, but they probably wouldn't have bothered with his feet if he couldn't walk. Leave that one as an unknown for now.

Four men; two close, two ranging further out. Each had a gun. So did Moriarty. Sherlock concentrated on the two men closest, while apparently watching his nemesis. Albanians. Not from Albania, though; clothing was wrong; from Macedonia. That was unusual, over here. They weren't concerned with showing their faces, even out here, which suggested that they were intending to leave again rapidly.

Now where did their allegiances lie? Or did Moriarty control the lot? Even for the master criminal, the other side of Europe sounded out of his jurisdiction. Something about the way they were co-ordinating; definitely terrorist training, not ex-military. National Liberation Army, then. Sherlock found conventional politics uninteresting, but he knew every group that had been involved in serious crime across Europe for the last thirty years. The NLA was theoretically long disbanded, but the weapons and the men were still out there somewhere.

Normally he hated bluffing, but the odds here were too long without it. He knew no more than a few words of Albanian but Bulgarian was close enough to Macedonian; he snapped out an old slogan, saw the men straighten. Without the language he couldn't hope to pass for NLA but he had a couple of names, invented a likely-sounding alliance with a Bulgar group, told the men that they'd carried out their assignments and the time had come to disappear. There was, he said, dramatically, only death for money here; later there would be death for their country. They'd get paid shortly.

It wouldn't have had a hope of succeeding if they hadn't already been ready to bolt. Out in the open, where the enemy knew their position and no doubt with Moriarty being his usual disturbingly insane self, they wanted no more to do with this anyway. They were walking away fast from Moriarty's hissed, impotent threats.

"Never," Sherlock said pleasantly to Moriarty, "use terrorists. They'll only despise you for not following the cause." And then he reassessed the situation and bit back a curse.

Damn. He'd been too busy with the men to stop Moriarty moving behind the wheelchair. Sherlock could see the shape of the gun, up against Lestrade's spine.

"Clever boy. Not clever enough, though. Give me my swap and get out of here, or you lose your slut. And then your life; one bullet each."

John was out in the bushes to the side of them; Sherlock had caught a glimpse of bits of a stationary figure. No reason for anyone else to stop out there. But a bullet in Moriarty would likely trigger the shot that would kill Lestrade. Moriarty's gun should be obvious to John.

Moriarty really did want Davenport, it seemed. Sherlock had wondered if it was just a lure for him, but no.

"Davenport's hiding in the bandstand. I'll show you." He pulled out his phone, slowly. Spoke loudly.

"Where are you, Kevin?"

"I'm still here." A young voice, shaking.

"Take a photo of the stand, and send it to me."

"OK." Lamb to the slaughter. Sherlock didn't intend to get him slaughtered, if he could help it, but the boy wasn't his first priority.

The photo came through, and he held it up for Moriarty. Who looked triumphant, then cautious.

"Very cute. And what's to stop me killing you both and then going to get him?"

"Panic spreads faster than you can run. He's looking out for it. Any gunshots here and he'll be safe long before you can get there." He smiled, slowly. "Also, John Watson's got a pistol trained on you from about 50 feet away and he's an extremely good shot."

"So you walk away and he kills me? Come on, darling. You can surely do better than that if you try."

"You know him better than that, Jim. He wouldn't shoot you in cold blood, particularly not out here where other people could get hurt. Now if I had the pistol, you'd be dead by now." His eyes swept across Lestrade's drawn white face, the eye swollen bloody and shut. He meant it.

Moriarty was apparently buying it. "All right. We'll play your way. Give me your phone." So he couldn't call Davenport and warn him.

"In a minute." He slid his seldom used switchblade out from his pocket, walked forward to pull the blanket off Lestrade. "Can you walk?"

Lestrade would surely have the sense to hear that as "can you run?"

"I think so." The voice sounded hollow and not like Lestrade at all. Sherlock revised his estimate of what the man might be capable of right now. He bent down, severed the cable tie around Lestrade's ankles, then moved up to his wrists, noting the way the right was held. Broken.

Sherlock clasped the left hard, his fingers twitching forwards, apparently making a pig's ear of severing the cable tie. Understand, he willed, felt, eventually, muscles tense. He dug three fingers in, hard, paused, then two, paused again, felt the readiness of the body underneath. One, and he was pulling Lestrade forwards and down, hard as he could, while slashing the blade upwards. A shot rang out, so deafening that he nearly missed the second. Lestrade had been hit; he'd felt the impact. He'd not been fast enough.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Part 2

 

Lestrade woke up in an unfamiliar bed with unfamiliar noises and a familiar smell. Hospital.

He was flat on his back. Nothing seemed to want to move, and for a moment he panicked, but his fingers finally twitched after a huge effort. He opened his eyes.

"About time." A caustic, instantly recognisable voice. "I was told that you would wake up an hour ago."

Lestrade turned his head with an effort. "Sherlock." He remembered being in the wheelchair, the gun against his spine. "Was I shot?"

"Yes."

"Damn." He didn't like the way his body didn't want to belong to him. "Badly?"

"Moderately. You've been unconscious for three days; you were in surgery for six hours and lost a lot of blood but they tell me that you will probably make a reasonable recovery." He looked down at Lestrade, calmly. "You'll be back to work in a couple of months."

"Right." He tried to think. "Is anyone dead?"

"Not yet." Sherlock didn't sound impressed. "Moriarty's still in intensive care with a slashed throat and a bullet in his ribs."

"OK." He tried a smile. "Didn't imagine you were the hanging round hospitals type." Which was as close as he could get to a thank you for being here.

Sherlock snorted. "As the distraught boyfriend I get priority over the police. We need to talk."

"Boyfriend?" He tried to imagine Sherlock distraught. Over Watson, maybe. Sherlock had gone to pieces while John left for a few weeks, after all. Over him? He thought not.

"Your message was useful, for that as well as the gardens. That was good thinking. It would have taken much longer to find you without that."

Sherlock sat down by the bed. "I don't have a great deal of time; Donovan and Special Branch are hovering outside. We need to talk about what you are going to say to them."

Why not the truth? Lestrade thought back, mind shying away from details. "You let them go." One of them had...he'd seen them walk away at Sherlock's command. He was suddenly angry. "You let them go!"

"I know where they are."

"Not arrested?"

"Not yet. I needed to talk to you first. Moriarty's trial, if he survives, is going to be unpleasant enough. Do you really want to testify against them as well?"

Lestrade shivered. "They shouldn't go free."

"There are other forms of justice." Sherlock's eyes were cold.

Bloody hell. Lestrade tried to sit up, found he couldn't. "Hand them over to the police, for God's sake, and I'll pretend I had no idea what you were just talking about."

"Very well." He thought he heard a trace of disappointment in the man's voice.

Lestrade sighed. Sherlock had kissed him, not that long ago. It seemed an age past, and two different men. "Was that all?"

"No." Sherlock looked slightly uncomfortable. "You ought to know that I'm under arrest."

Of course he was. Why could nothing be even remotely straightforward. "For what?"

"There's a long list. Kidnapping is top at the moment, but there's quite a lot of perverting the cause of justice in there too."

There had been that boy's voice. Lestrade took a breath. "I'll see what I can do to help."

"No!" Urgency in Sherlock's voice. "That's exactly what you mustn't do. You're going to have to disassociate yourself from me completely. This isn't minor stuff like John's gun or the cocaine. As far as the authorities are concerned, I'm responsible from start to finish for you getting kidnapped, assaulted and shot. Your support won't help; they already believe that I have a malign influence over you.

"You want to get back to work at all, let alone recover your career chances; you need to make it clear that your infatuation is completely gone, and that you share the official view that I'm a dangerous vigilante who got you raped and shot."

He stood up. "Remember that."

"What about you?" Lestrade was too bewildered to know what he thought.

"No-one will convict me of anything." Sherlock's voice was arrogant again. "I don't need your help."

He looked down at Lestrade one last time. "You're alive. That's something. I hate losing."

Then he walked out.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There were a lot of rumours going round at the moment. That the Commissioner was about to resign- Sally thought that one unlikely. That the unit would be disbanded at the end of the PCC investigation- that must be close to a dead cert. That Detective Inspector Lestrade was a broken man- she still didn't know what she thought about that one.

At his request she had sat in on all the official interviews, held in his hospital room. He'd rejected the strong recommendation of legal representation and there wasn't anyone else to stay with him. She'd listened through endless hours of questions, heard him give his quiet, definite answers over and over again. There were a lot of interviews; different teams working on the prosecution of his kidnappers, of Holmes and Watson, the PCC enquiries into everything from the discharge of firearms to the leaking of confidential police files and the internal disciplinary investigations. One of which, she was painfully aware, related to her. Because she'd been stupid enough to give Holmes an inch and he'd taken several miles and got Greg nearly killed in the process.

Greg didn't seem to share her utter fury with the mess that Sherlock bloody Holmes had created. He didn't seem to care about any of it. In the interviews he answered questions, outside them he talked about football and the weather with the same still calm. If she tried to discuss the investigations or his injuries or the therapy he was supposedly having he said something noncommittal and changed the subject. The only time she'd seen him lose his temper was when some poorly briefed physiotherapist tried to insist that he actually use the folded wheelchair gathering dust behind the door.

Thanks to the interviews, she now knew far more than she wanted to about his ill-fated liaison with Sherlock. They'd all been lonely, she'd come to realise, the job did that. They'd mistaken that for desire. She'd ended up in a couple of beds where she didn't belong, and she hadn't been the only one. But Greg- the poor sod hadn't had a chance.

Of course he'd noticed Sherlock from the start, he'd said. You could hardly miss him. But he'd been in a relationship at the time, as well as being way too old for the boy. By the time that imploded, a couple of years ago, it had become obvious that Sherlock wasn't interested in anyone, so he'd learned to ignore it.

Then John Watson had moved in, and the change in Sherlock had been startling. "Seeing that," Lestrade had said, a hint of amusement under the quiet, "I thought that maybe I should at least have tried before. But no point then, anyway."

But it hadn't been happy ever after; John was straight and Sherlock frustrated, enough so to turn elsewhere for sex. It had been a one night stand, nothing more, but Moriarty must have got wind of it somehow.

Greg answered the follow-up questions politely, while Sally seethed on his behalf. No, it had definitely not been part of a relationship. No, he wasn't in the habit of sleeping around, but he did, occasionally. No, he had not been in love with Holmes; just attracted. No, that attraction had nothing to do with his consultations on cases; he had gone to Sherlock because Sherlock got results. No, and this time his head came up, eyes dark, he was not shielding Holmes. Given recent events, why on earth would he do that?

Days dragged by into weeks. Sally had been suspended on full pay. At least looking after Greg, as much as he'd allow, gave her something to do. One morning she went in and there was an unexpected spark in his eyes.

"Good morning?"

"Yes." He'd pushed the hospital letter across at her. Negative for HIV antibodies. She hadn't even known that he'd been worried about it.

"Didn't they test the..." she trailed off, wondering what to call him.

"Can't without the bastard's consent, apparently, even though he's on remand." That was as close as he'd got to acknowledging anything of what had happened outside the interviews.

"Oh. Well, good. Brilliant. Guess we've got you with us for a long time to come, then."

"Sometimes," he said, thoughtfully, "I lie awake and imagine that we're all convicted of our various offences and locked up together. Then I get even." He smiled at her. "Unfortunately even our prison service isn't quite that incompetent. Never mind. I'll settle for still living today."

Sally nodded. Wondered, briefly, just how many people Greg wanted to get even with. Her own list had six names on it. Seven when she was feeling particularly uncharitable, but when it came down to it John Watson was just a fool.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The police had run out of questions.

Sherlock was home again; on bail. John saw Mycroft's hand in that one. Strictly he was on police bail himself, although he doubted that they'd charge him with more than illegal possession of the gun. Again. It kept going round to that. Sometimes he wished he'd handed the damn thing in when he was discharged, as he should have done. But then Sherlock could have swallowed that stupid pill, back when they'd first met, and died.

No-one had been able to tell him for certain whether his shot at Moriarty had made a difference in the end. Sherlock's considered opinion was "possibly." Possibly Moriarty would have fired a second shot despite Sherlock's blade slashing across his throat, not deep enough to kill. Possibly that shot would have hit Lestrade, or Sherlock.

John had a couple more possiblys. Possibly if he'd brought the cavalry in response to Sherlock's message, Moriarty could have been killed without firing at all. Possibly if Moriarty had become aware of armed police in the park, he would have killed Greg and Sherlock outright. Far too many possibilities to say definitely yes, that was the right thing to have done, or no, it was a mistake.

The police investigators didn't care about possibilities. They cared about criminal offences committed. Sherlock had kidnapped a nineteen year old boy out of police protective custody and put his life in jeopardy by dangling him unwilling and terrified in front of five armed murderers as bait. Sherlock had lied and withheld information from the police in a case of rape and kidnapping and murder (the man who'd brought the wheelchair having been shot at close range). Sherlock had carried a blade as illegal as John's pistol. They'd ripped 221B Baker Street apart while the two men were still in custody rather more thoroughly than Lestrade's drug busts had ever managed, found cocaine, found traces of poisons and psychotropics. They had gone through every case that Sherlock had worked for Lestrade, cataloguing illegalities. That Sherlock was out on bail at all said volumes for Mycroft's influence.

"Coffee?" There was nothing to do but to carry on. John had learned that in Afghanistan and afterwards.

"Yes." Sherlock stretched a hand out across the papers on his desk without looking round.

"What are you doing?"

"Drafting a confession."

"What?" If he'd been sure of one thing, it was that Sherlock would fight to the end. Everything he'd done, Sherlock had insisted to him when they'd first had a chance to talk away from the investigators, had been the right, the logical thing to do. Lestrade was alive as a result, albeit slightly shot. He'd just have to keep explaining it to these stupid people until they saw sense. John couldn't help noticing that four weeks later they didn't seem any closer to agreeing with Sherlock.

Sherlock turned at the surprise in his voice. "Not my confession, idiot. One for Sadiku."

Dritan Sadiku was the man who'd been charged with rape. It still turned John cold to think of it.

Somehow Sherlock had got hold of the full video, with sound. John had declined the suggestion that he watch. Lestrade was in hospital, with doctors trained in dealing with such matters. The medical opinion of an ex-army doctor which would probably amount to no more than "that would have bloody well hurt" was no use to anyone. Leave the poor sod what little privacy he still had left.

Sherlock, he had been seriously worried to observe, didn't seem to be able to leave it alone. Twice John had walked into the sitting room to the sound of panting or worse, and a second later silence. He wondered how often Sherlock had turned it off before he'd entered.

"You're going to have to explain that one. Why would he use something you've drafted?"

Sherlock flashed him that fast, proud smile, the one that said that he knew John would disapprove but he couldn't resist showing how clever he was. "He and his solicitor are somehow still under the impression that I'm relaying instructions from the NLA."

Oh God. As if they weren't in enough trouble already. "What the hell are you playing at this time?"

"I'm arranging for justice to be done."

"Can't you just leave that for the courts?"

"No." He was sitting back now. "If they plead not guilty, everything will be dragged up in court. Everything."

John sighed. "Come on, Sherlock. Greg's gay; you slept together- neither of these revelations are going to wreck anyone's life. I don't think there's anyone left who doesn't know already."

In response Sherlock tipped the laptop screen towards him. He looked at the frozen scene and flinched.

"I did that." Chill voice.

"No!" That Sherlock had been carrying around guilt for the assault; that he hadn't expected. "Moriarty did. Sadiku did. You're not responsible for what they did. Everything you did was to save him."

"You're not listening." Sherlock was snarling at him. "I. Did. That. To him. Before they did. Recreational sexual violence; Moriarty's lawyers are going to have a field day cross examining both of us on that one. And Lestrade won't have the sense to lie."

Greg with marks and scratches; John remembered vividly. Abrasions round one wrist. But Lestrade had seemed relaxed and cheerful, until he'd spotted John.

"You didn't do anything like that to him."

Sherlock pulled the laptop back, closed it. "Since you have always refused to admit that I did anything at all, I don't find that reassurance particularly convincing." He stood up. "I have someone to meet." And he was down the stairs without another word.

 

It was past 2am when John finally heard the front door, the noise of a taxi accelerating away. He sat in the lamp light, waiting.

"Good night John." Sherlock was through the room and into his bedroom in one grand sweep.

"Sherlock!" John called through the bedroom door. "Sherlock. Can I talk to you? Please?"

Quiet. He tried again. "I can't apologise through a door!"

"Why not?"

"Just trust me. I can't."

Pause. "Come in, then."

Sherlock was sprawled face down on his bed, still clothed. John looked round for a chair, chided himself. He could damn well sit on the bed with Sherlock. His friend.

He'd rehearsed this for hours, but it still was difficult. "I've been a total bastard. I'm sorry."

"Elucidate." Sherlock turned his head to meet John's uncomfortable gaze.

"OK." He grimaced. "How often have you seen Greg since the attack?"

"Once."

"I didn't even think to ask you about that. Or how you felt about what happened to him, how you were coping. I was so determined that there couldn't really have been anything between you that when your boyfriend was raped and nearly killed I act as if he's just a mutual acquaintance."

"Boyfriend..."

"...Is a poor term. I know. Still. I never asked about a better one, did I?"

"No."

"It wasn't just a one-night stand, was it?"

"Technically, it only covered one night, yes. But there was a clear mutual intention of more." A hint of regret.

"What's happened about that, Sherlock?"

"It's unwise for Greg to continue the association."

John looked down at Sherlock, sighed. "Is that what you told him?"

"Yes."

"Did you give him any option in the matter."

"No."

"Don't you think you should have done?"

Sherlock rolled onto his back to contemplate the ceiling. "You and I, John, are in quite enough trouble already. Greg is unlikely to welcome a physical liaison so soon after his ordeal. This is the optimal result."

He glanced over at John "I ought to cut you loose as well. My company is toxic in a legal sense right now, and you're a target just as Lestrade was. But I imagine there would be excessive kicking and screaming, and no-one to make the coffee. And you have less to lose than he does."

John thought that maybe he was beginning to understand. Should have tried much earlier.

"I think we've got pretty much exactly the same amount to lose, Sherlock. I doubt that Greg is any happier about being abandoned than I would be."

Sherlock's eyes were dark. "You don't know what I did."

John pulled himself up to the headboard, curled his legs onto the bed. "No. I don't. But from the way he looked afterwards I'm fairly sure that he wanted you to do it again." He settled himself, letting his legs brush against Sherlock's. Why had he been so paranoid about simple, human touch? "It's bothering you. That doesn't happen often. You'd better tell me about it."

"You don't like hearing about my sex life."

"No. It makes me feel uncomfortable and distinctly jealous. But it's about time that I grew up enough to be a proper friend when you need it, which is now. So tell me about you and Greg."

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The doorbell rang and Lestrade started the long and still painful business of hauling himself to his feet. The walking stick was by the sofa; he made his way slowly down the hall. It was good to be back at home but it still took a while to get used to having to do everything for himself.

Sally's voice over the intercom. The new electronic locks slid open easily. Those and the huge red panic button by the door were his price for coming home. No-one, it was clear, thought that he was exactly safe, not until after the trials. He'd flatly refused a permanent police guard, but had agreed to the extra security. He was as keen as everyone else that he not get abducted again.

The door opened, and he knew that expression. Sergeant Donovan was about to start shouting. Not, he hoped at him. The fact that she held off until he was settled back in the armchair had to be a good sign.

"So what is it, Sally?"

"They've dropped the charges." Clearly no obscenity was sufficient, this time.

"Dropped?" He thought of the men, of Moriarty laughing at him. He didn't understand. "How could they drop the charges? They've got it on bloody video!"

"Got what on video?" She stared at him. "Oh God, no! Not those charges. I'm sorry, Greg. I didn't think."

She took a breath, calmer. "The ones against Holmes."

"Oh."

"Get this. I know some people involved at the CPS. Apparently the charges were dropped in the 'national interest'. What the fuck does that idiot have to do with the national interest? It would be in everyone's interest to lock him up for good."

A security asset of national importance, Mycroft Holmes had called his brother. Sally was still fuming. Lestrade was suddenly tired of the whole damn mess. Of being careful. Of saying the right thing.

"He saved my life," he said quietly, into a pause.

She blinked, started to protest. He spoke over her, wielding a touch of the authority he hadn't tried since it happened;

"How long do you think it would have taken Special Branch to find me? Twelve hours? Twenty four? Moriarty was sending a message an hour, Sally. I wouldn't have survived."

"They were messages to Sherlock, Greg. If it wasn't for him, you wouldn't have been taken."

"Someone would have been. Moriarty wanted Davenport, remember? Sherlock got Moriarty to take me out into the open. Sherlock faced off five armed men to get me."

"Sherlock got you shot." Sally was unbending.

"Odds of survival from the moment I was grabbed were close to zero. Sherlock gave me the only chances I got, and he risked his life to do it. And yes he broke half a dozen laws in the process, but I'd be fucking ungrateful if I wasn't glad that he's not going to go to prison for it. So I'm inclined to break out the champagne on this one, Sally."

She was staring at him. "That's not what you've been saying in the interviews."

"No. But it should have been." He sighed. "Sherlock told me not to support him. That he'd manage on his own. I guess if the charges have been dropped then he has. I've said nothing that isn't the God honest truth in those interviews, but I've never expressed my opinion on what happened. Sherlock said that would kill my chances of getting back to work, and the bloody man is always right. But it would have been the decent thing to do, and I didn't do it."

Sally's voice was quiet. "You don't blame him for getting you taken?"

"Oh, I wanted to kill him for most of the time I was in that office block. But what happened wasn't his fault. Could just as well say it was my fault for getting involved with him."

"I say that all the time," Sally said, more cheerfully.

"Thanks for that."

"No problem." She was serious again. "I still don't like him."

"No. He's not particularly likeable. Downright insulting much of the time." Lestrade agreed.

"Oh yes. And hell to work with; he doesn't tell you anything. And then he runs off with the evidence."

"Tell me about it. Five damn years I've had of that."

She smiled. "What was he like, then? In bed?"

"None of your goddamn business, Sergeant. Are you going to make coffee, or do I have to get up and do it?"

"I thought we were having champagne?"

"I've got some, as it happens. Back of the larder, waiting for a special occasion. This will do. Dig a couple of glasses out and we'll toast Mycroft Holmes."

"Who the hell," she asked, as she got up to go into the kitchen, "is Mycroft Holmes?"

"State secret. I'll tell you when you get back."  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

St James Park was uncomfortably similar to Kensington Gardens in many ways. John had never really thought about it before, but the lake, the waterfowl, the buildings around, all seemed similar. Still, it wasn't the same place. No Albanian gunmen, or crazy megomaniacs, not this afternoon.

He walked slowly round the lake. When he'd come here as a child, once or twice, there had been pelicans, but the parakeets screeching across the trees were new. Things changed. Nothing more certain than that.

Sally Donovan was sitting on a bench, feeding the ducks. John sat down beside her, took the proffered bread, spread it out around the milling birds.

"How's Greg?"

She thought about that one. "Doing well. Impatient. Now they've dropped the charges against Sherlock, it looks like a lot of the disciplinary stuff is going the same way. We might both get back to work eventually."

"Good." He knew what it was to lose your vocation. Not everyone was fortunate enough to find an alternative.

"So how is he?"

"Sherlock?" John shrugged. "Like Sherlock, I guess. Pleased that he doesn't have to bother with the police investigation any more. He made a lousy interviewee; apparently all their questions were stupid and their techniques clumsy."

"Poor sods. No wonder they gave up in the end."

John didn't get drawn on that one. Mycroft's involvement was meant to be confidential, but he doubted that Donovan really believed that the investigators had just gone away of their own accord.

"He misses Greg."

And that was blurted out; he'd intended to work round to it. But it was the reason that he'd asked Sally to meet him here. Though he knew what she thought of Sherlock; he didn't expect approval, just that she might talk to Lestrade about it.

"Sherlock does?" Disbelief.

John nodded. "I don't think it was exactly a love affair, or at least not on Sherlock's side. He doesn't really do that sort of thing. But they had something going until all this happened and Sherlock misses it."

"So why hasn't he been around? It's been over a month and I know damn well he hasn't visited Greg once." He could understand her bitterness.

"Because he thinks Greg's career will be irretrievably tainted unless the DI has no more to do with him. He thinks he's toxic." There were other, more personal concerns, but John wasn't going to pass on what he considered confidences.

"That sounds about right." Sally turned the paper bag over, let the wind take the crumbs.

"I don't think he gave Greg a choice about it though, Sally. He's not good at this. I just thought Greg should know that Sherlock misses him."

"You could have told him yourself."

John sighed. "There have been issues there, too. My fault, as it happens, but still, I thought it might be better coming from you."

"Right." She stood up. "I'm not doing Holmes' courting for him, that much is certain. But I'll tell Greg what you said."

"Thanks." He watched her walk around the curve of the lake, until she vanished. Then he set off home.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sherlock had finished delivering Sadiku's confession to his distinctly scared solicitor. He was rather enjoying the role of Balkan mafiosa; he'd been doing some networking while he was at it, had found out any number of interesting things about current international crime.

It looked like he'd succeeded anyway; the men would all plead guilty now. What Moriarty would do was still something of a mystery. He was still in hospital, under guard, but seemed to be recovering. Sherlock wanted to get his work with the Albanians done before Moriarty took back his criminal network and unmasked him. Sherlock had little doubt that the prison service weren't capable of preventing that from happening; he would be surprised if they managed to keep Moriarty at all.

Contemplating such worrying matters, he opened his front door and stopped. Someone was here. Mrs Hudson had let them in; she had instructions not to do that unless it was someone she knew personally. No umbrella- not Mycroft.

Marks on the stairs from a walking stick. What was Lestrade doing here? Trouble? Sherlock took the steps two at a time.

Lestrade had settled in the big armchair, stick by his side. He'd put on a bit of weight, Sherlock noticed, since that day in the hospital. Too much sitting around.

"Have you any idea what sort of hell getting up those stairs was?" Lestrade said. "Next time you can bloody well come and visit me."

This was not coincidence. "John talked to you."

"No." Lestrade sounded rather pleased at catching him out. "John talked to Sally. Sally talked to me. Wouldn't it have been easier just to phone me direct, Sherlock?"

"I didn't want you here."

"That's brutally honest, I suppose. If insulting."

Sherlock shook his head. "No. I explained it to John. I explained it to you. You don't want to be connected with me."

Anger flared in Lestrade's eyes. "Don't tell me what I don't want, Sherlock. Just because you saved my life doesn't give you the right to run it."

Sherlock frowned. This didn't make sense. He'd been sure that Lestrade had understood, back at the hospital. "Being associated with me is likely to damage your career. Not to mention the increased risk of abduction."

"I get that." Lestrade was still glaring at him. "My choices, Sherlock. Not yours."

"So choose to go away."

"No." Lestrade shifted in the chair and Sherlock found himself mentally cataloguing healing injuries. "A few weeks ago you were chasing me around London insisting that I found you irresistible. And it turned out despite my protests that yes, I did. So why are you so surprised that I still want to be here?"

"Apart from the threat to your career?"

"Yes, apart from that. Because to be honest, Sherlock, I rather think that I'm capable of managing that on my own."

It was still an unnecessary risk. But Lestrade was right, it wasn't the only reason.

"You can't have thought this through, or you'd know that you don't want to do this any more."

That touched off rage. "Why the hell not? You think that bloody rape's left me impotent? Is that it? Poor fucking damaged Greg won't want sex? Because that's not how it fucking works, I swear to you."

"Because," Sherlock said, annoyed into bluntness, "everything that I want to do to you has already been done by Dritan Sadiku and therefore neither of us are likely to find it particularly entertaining."

When it became clear that Lestrade had no coherent response to that except to stare at him, Sherlock shrugged and went into the kitchen to see if there was any food. "John will be back any time now" he called out, helpfully. "I'm sure he'll give you a hand with the stairs."

It appeared that Lestrade wasn't going to wait. Sherlock heard him lever himself out of the chair, heard his breath catching as he moved. Then a door- the wrong one. What was the man doing?

Lestrade was sitting on the edge of his bed, carefully pushing the various piles of objects off it with his stick. "If any of this is explosive, I'm just unlucky. Par for the course at the moment." he said cheerfully.

"What are you doing?"

Mock surprise. "Surely you can work that out, Mr Consulting Detective?"

Sherlock frowned. "You appear to be intending to get into my bed."

"Right in one." Lestrade started to undo his jacket.

"This isn't a good idea."

"This is the best idea I've had in ages. Because you are an idiot."

"No, I'm not."

'Yes." He was carefully peeling off his shirt, the scar tissue still shocking red underneath. "Do you really not understand the difference between what he did, and what we did?"

"I saw the video. It was the same."

"It looked the same, possibly. Since when did you get taken in by appearances, Sherlock?"

Sherlock had to think about that one. This was what John had said. He'd assumed the man was wrong. "I'm fairly sure it would have felt the same."

"For you, possibly, though I very much doubt it, For me, not even close. And I'm the one that matters in this situation. For God's sake, Sherlock, what did you think consent was about?"

"About not getting arrested, mainly." Sherlock thought he'd better be honest.

Lestrade snorted. "That figures. I've met ferrets more socialised than you. Fortunately, recent events should have taught you the wisdom of not getting arrested." He started to unbuckle his belt.

Sherlock took a step back. "This is a bad idea."

"Why?" Lestrade softened slightly. "We don't have to have sex, Sherlock. I do understand if that's a problem for you right now, or even forever. But you're going to come in here and kiss me, because I'm not having you thinking of me as the man on that tape for a moment longer."

Greg took a sharp breath, lay back on the coverlet . "And because I could do with a hand getting these trousers off. Never get shot, Sherlock. It's a bloody nuisance."

"I don't intend to." Sherlock gave up, came forward to sit on the bed, hands in his lap.

"For God's sake, Sherlock. I don't really want to be swinging from the chandeliers for a few weeks yet, but I won't shatter. You can touch me." Lestrade sighed. "Or do I have to beg?"

"No." Sherlock looked down at the man. Still plenty of smooth skin that wasn't scarred. A half naked Lestrade in his bed; interest stirred. John would be back soon; they'd have to be quiet. Except that John might not actually mind, now.

He placed a hand, carefully, on Lestrade's chest. Felt the warm skin, the heart beating, the man breathing. He'd done this. Not flawlessly, unfortunately, but he'd saved this body moreorless intact. There was a symmetry to being offered it back now that appealed. And with that thought his decision was made. When both Greg and John agreed on something, it was probably not worth the effort of resisting.

"I have no idea what you're thinking," Lestrade told him, "But now would be a good time to kiss me."

And that seemed reasonable, so Sherlock did.

 

THE END


End file.
